Twisted Hate: An Enemies with Benefits Romance

by Ana Huang

  Drunk and desperate. The most dangerous combination.

  “Maybe I should take my payment another way,” he said, his voice so nasty it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Max reached between my legs. “See if your pussy is still tight enough to make me come.”

  Dots danced before my vision. My limbs were growing heavier, my struggles for breath weaker, so I did the only thing I could do—I kneed him in the balls with every ounce of strength I had left.

  His howl of pain ripped through the stairwell. He released me and doubled over.

  I allowed myself one second to bask in the sweet air flowing through my lungs again before I stumbled toward the exit, but I only made it two steps before a hand shoved against my back. I didn’t even get a chance to scream before I plummeted down the stairs. My head slammed against something cold and hard, and I caught only the briefest glimpse of the stairwell door opening before everything went dark.

  49

  JOSH

  “You forgot to ask about their allergies,” I snapped. “How am I supposed to treat a patient properly if I don’t have all the relevant information? This is the ER, Lucy. We can’t afford any kind of fuckups.”

  Lucy shrank back from my harsh tone.

  I usually had a great working relationship with the nurses, but I was too irritated by the sting of antiseptic in the air, the clicks of the keyboard at the nurses’ station, the squeak of shoes against the linoleum floors...basically everything.

  I ignored the heat of Clara’s glare from several feet away. It wasn’t my fault if people were incompetent.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucy said, her face pale. “I’ll make sure to remember next time.”

  “Good.” I turned on my heel and left, not bothering to say goodbye.

  “Don’t stress about it,” I heard Clara say behind me. “It was your first mistake since you started working here. You’ve been doing a great job.”

  She caught up with me a minute later, her irritation as sharp as the one running through my veins. “Doctor, can I speak with you? Alone.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “You can make time.” Clara yanked me into the nearest side hallway. Doctors and nurses rushed past us, too caught up in their own work to pay us much attention. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Her eyes bore into mine, equal parts concerned and annoyed.

  “Nothing is wrong with me. I’m doing my job. Or I would be, if someone wasn’t holding me up.” I leveled her with a pointed stare.

  “Does your job include alienating every person in the ER? If so, you’re the Employee of the Month,” Clara said coolly. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but you’ve been acting like a boor for the past week. So here’s my advice, both as a nurse and your friend. Cut that shit out, or you’ll ruin everything you’ve worked for the past three years. No one likes an asshole doctor.” She jabbed her finger at my chest. “Next patient. Room four. We don’t have time for your moodiness right now, so I suggest you set whatever the fuck is bothering you aside and stop making it harder on everyone else around you. You want to do your job? Then do your job.”

  She stalked off and disappeared around the corner.

  I stood there for several stunned seconds before I released a sharp exhale.

  Clara was right. I’d been acting like a grade-A ass. What happened last week had messed me up, and I’d been taking it out on everyone around me.

  My jaw flexed when I remembered my breakup with Jules, but I didn’t have time to dwell on that right now.

  I had a job to do, and I’d already wasted valuable time.

  I checked the patient’s information in the hospital’s online system before entering the room. She was female, aged twenty-four, named…

  My skin chilled right as the words sharpened onscreen.

  Jules Ambrose.

  You’ve gotta be shitting me.

  It had to be another Jules Ambrose. The universe wouldn’t have that fucked up of a sense of humor.

  But when I pushed open the door to room four with a shaking hand, there she was, looking like she’d stepped right out of my most beautiful nightmare.

  She stared back at me, her eyes wide with shock. A nasty cut slashed across the corner of her forehead and hit me like a punch in the gut.

  Jules. Hurt.

  Time slowed into one endless, painful beat. It was so quiet I could count each individual thud of my pulse.

  One. Two. Three.

  You’d think a week would be long enough to blunt the serrated edges of my pain, but you’d be wrong. They raked against my insides, making me bleed all over again, but they were nothing compared to the worry raging in my gut.

  How the hell did Jules get that cut? What if it was infected? What if she—

  Jules shifted, and the soft squeak of leather finally dragged me out of my trance.

  In this room, we weren’t exes.

  She was a patient; I was her doctor. This wasn’t the time to wallow in our personal history or freak out over one small cut…no matter how much the sight of her blood made my heart twist.

  “I’m Dr. Chen.” I spoke in a clipped, professional tone, thankful none of my inner turmoil bled through.

  I would treat Jules like I would any other patient—one I didn’t know.

  The more distance I placed between us, the better.

  “Hi, Dr. Chen. I’m Jules.” The tiniest of tentative smiles played on her mouth and stole the breath right out of my fucking lungs.

  Focus.

  Thank God my attending physician wasn’t here. As a third-year resident, I usually started the patient encounter before telling my attending, who’ll see the patient on his own after I gave him the pertinent information.

  If my attending were here, he would not have approved of how distracted I was. He could always tell when my head wasn’t in the game.

  Clara had already checked Jules’s ABC’s—airway, breathing, and circulation—so I jumped straight into the questions, hoping they’d ground me.

  “What happened?” I stared at my clipboard like it was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen. The less I looked at her, the less likely I was to cave like a cheap umbrella during a thunderstorm. I was still pissed at her. One injury didn’t change that.

  She’s fine. It’s just a cut.

  “I fell down the stairs,” she said quietly.

  My hand stilled for a fraction of a second before I continued my notes. My heart thumped so loud it almost drowned out my next words. “How many stairs were there?”

  “Maybe a dozen? I’m not sure.”

  Fuck. Sweat coated my skin at the mental image of Jules crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs. I almost reached for her the way I would’ve had we still been dating, but I forced my personal feelings aside and examined her extremities for injuries.

  I couldn’t find any physical wounds except for the cut on her forehead and a couple of bruises, but that didn’t mean she was in the clear.

  The sweat intensified as the worst-case scenarios for all possible internal injuries flashed through my mind.

  Stop. She’s your patient. That’s it.

  “Did you hit your head?” It was an obvious question, given the cut, but I had to ask.

  Jules nodded.

  “Did you pass out?”

  “Yes.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and ran through the rest of my questions.

  Are you taking any blood thinners? No.

  Is there any chance you’re pregnant? No.

  “Are you hurting anywhere in particular right now?”

  My question hung between us, thick with unspoken meaning.

  Despite everything that happened between us, the thought of Jules hurt made it so fucking hard to breathe.

  “My head, shoulder, and lower back.”

  “What about your neck?” I felt along her C-spine and breathed a silent sigh of relief when she didn’t flinch. “Does it hurt?”

  Jules shook her head.
“No. It’s just the places I mentioned. Physically, anyway,” she added softly.

  The air thinned while the ache in my chest intensified.

  She was so close I could hear her breathing.

  I’d forgotten how much I loved that sound—the sound of her just existing, reminding me that no matter how fucked up the world got, there was at least one good thing in it.

  At least, there used to be.

  I set my jaw and finished the physical examination as quickly as possible. “Right. I’ll order a CT scan, just in case.” My crisp words bounced through the fluorescent-lit room, erasing any hint of softness. “How did you fall down the stairs?”

  A long silence passed before she answered. “Someone pushed me.”

  I stared at her, sure I’d heard wrong. “Someone pushed you.”

  Jules nodded, her lips tight. “I was walking down the stairs after my bar exam. I was distracted, so I wasn’t paying much attention to my surroundings. The person…surprised me, and they pushed me when I tried to get away. I hit my head and passed out. When I woke up, I was in the back of a taxi with a woman, someone I recognized from the testing site. She said she’d just entered the stairwell when she heard me fall, but she didn’t see anyone else. She dropped me off at the hospital and, well, here I am.”

  She relayed what happened in a matter-of-fact manner, but the slight shake in her voice told me the incident freaked her out more than she let on.

  Slow, poisonous rage oozed into my bloodstream.

  I wasn’t a stranger to anger, but I’d never felt like this before.

  Like I wanted to hunt down the person responsible and rip them apart with my bare fucking hands.

  “Who?” My calm voice belied the violence brewing in my stomach. “Who did this to you?”

  She said the person surprised her. Judging from her tone, it was someone she knew.

  I guessed the answer before she told me.

  “Max.” Apprehension crept into Jules’s eyes, like she was afraid of how I’d react to the name, and for good fucking reason.

  Max. The guy who had a sex tape of her. Who blackmailed her into stealing from me. Who put his fucking hands on her and destroyed the only beautiful thing in my life…us.

  My rage deepened, tinting my world a bloody crimson.

  “I see.” I betrayed none of the emotion roaring through my chest. “I’m going to make some arrangements for your CT scan. I’ll be right back.”

  I left the room and pulled out my phone. It took me less than two seconds to shoot Alex a text.

  Me: I need you to find someone for me.

  50

  JOSH

  The great thing about having a morally questionable best friend was that they didn’t question you when you did morally questionable things.

  Alex didn’t ask why I wanted to track Max down; he just did it. It took him less than an hour because, according to him, Max left a trail of digital crumbs so obvious a blind Luddite could’ve followed it.

  When we found him hoovering drinks at a dive bar like an alcoholic Dyson, Max was already three sheets to the wind, and it took only the promise of more booze, drugs, and girls to lure him with us.

  I let Alex do the talking and took a separate car in case Max recognized me, but he was so drunk he didn’t notice anything was wrong until we entered a silent, secluded house on the city’s outskirts.

  By then, it was too late.

  “He must’ve really pissed you off.” Alex examined Max’s bound form the way a scientist would examine a particularly interesting specimen beneath a microscope. “This isn’t your usual style.”

  I flexed my hands into fists.

  Max sat tied to a chair in the middle of the basement, his mouth duct-taped shut and his body twisting in a futile struggle against his ties. His alcohol-induced haze had cleared, and I saw the stark reality of his situation reflected in his eyes.

  Good.

  I wanted him to feel every second of this.

  “My usual style isn’t working for me.” The rage I’d suppressed during my work shift roared back, drowning out any reservations I might’ve had.

  I was a doctor, not a fighter. I’d pledged to do no harm. But the Josh that made that pledge was different than the one in this room. Even memories of him were hazy, buried beneath the weight of the past week’s events.

  I walked over to Max and ripped the tape off his mouth. I wasn’t worried about anyone hearing us. The house was Alex’s secret city hideaway, the place where he went when he needed to be alone but didn’t have time for a longer trip, and it was soundproofed and secured enough to make The Pentagon weep with envy.

  “You recognize me.” It wasn’t a question.

  Max’s awareness of my identity was obvious in the pinch of his mouth and the burning flame of panicked resentment in his eyes.

  “Jules told me what you did. Ohio, the painting, the blackmail, everything.” I bent until we were at eye level. “You should’ve skipped town when you had the chance. Staying here was a stupid move. Pushing Jules down the stairs was even stupider.”

  I saw Alex arch an eyebrow out of the corner of my eye. Otherwise, he didn’t react to the new information or mention of Jules.

  “She deserved it.” Max didn’t deny my accusation like I’d expected. He must’ve known it wouldn’t do him any good. “The people who wanted the painting are pissed I lost it. They’re out for blood.” A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. “She fucked me over and thought she could walk away with no consequences. After everything I did for her when we were young. She had no job, no home, and I took her in. You think I want to stay in this fucking city? I can’t go back to Ohio, not without the painting. She deserved it!”

  His voice rose with each word until spittle frothed at his mouth. His sour, whiskey-tinted breath clouded the air between us and made my stomach twist with disgust.

  “That sounds like a personal problem. You get in bed with the wrong people, you pay the consequences. The only thing I care about…” I gripped his shoulder and dug my fingers into the pressure points until he squeaked with pain. “...is the fact you hurt her. That was a big mistake, Max.”

  “Surprised you’re still taking her side after what she did,” Max panted. Malice mingled with the resentment in his eyes. “She hurt more than she helped by returning that painting to you. My friends will be coming for you next, and they’re not as nice as I am.”

  I wasn’t a fucking idiot. I’d already took steps to mitigate that possibility, but Max didn’t need to know that.

  “I wasn’t going to kill her. I just wanted to give her a scare. Rough her up a little, scare her into helping me again.” Max’s eyes darted around the room, searching for help that didn’t exist. “It’s not fair that she keeps getting away with what she did. I went to jail for something we both did while she went to a fancy school and made fancy friends. It’s not fair. She owes me!”

  He sounded like a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum.

  “She only got into that life because of you.” I clamped down harder on his shoulder. “Don’t act like you’re an innocent martyr.”

  “So protective of her even after she lied and stole from you.” Max’s lip curled, his desire for a cheap shot outweighing any sense of self-preservation. “What is it? Is it the pussy? I remember it was pretty good, especially her first time when she bled all over my cock. There’s nothing like breaking in a virgin. But it’s probably worn out—”

  His sentence cut off with a choked cry when I slammed my fist into his face.

  Fury darkened the edges of my vision. The world narrowed until the only thing I could focus on was my fierce, all-consuming need to cause the man in front of me as much pain as possible.

  But I wanted this to be a fair fight. That way, I could let loose without any guilt.

  I held out a hand. Alex slid a knife into my open palm, and I slashed the ropes binding Max.

  He lurched out of his chair, but he didn’t make it two steps b
efore I hauled him back by his collar and punched him again.

  The satisfying crunch of bone ripped through the air, followed by a howl of pain.

  Max clutched his broken nose with one hand and swung at me with the other. I dodged his clumsy attempt with little effort, and I heard another crunch when my fist connected with his jaw.

  My blood sang with exhilaration as the storm inside me finally found its release. Every punch, every spray of blood on my face loosened an inch of pressure in my chest.

  The air crackled with unleashed violence, and soon, the snap of bone gave way to the wet sound of bloodied flesh.

  Sweat and blood blurred my vision, but I kept going, fueled by mental images of Jules’s injuries and Max’s earlier taunts.

  I didn’t want to do it. He was blackmailing me…

  They pushed me when I tried to get away…

  Is it the pussy? I remember it was pretty good, especially her first time when she bled all over my cock.

  A fresh wave of rage swept through me, and I punched Max hard enough that he collapsed onto the ground. His hands scrabbled against the floor as he tried to crawl away, but there was nowhere for him to escape.

  “Please.” He gasped out a wet, gurgling plea. “Stop. Please…”

  I barely heard him.

  It wasn’t just Jules. It was Michael and Alex and every patient I lost in the ER. Every bottled-up hurt, disappointment, and frustration from the past few years. I unleashed it all on Max until his pleas died off and his body turned limp.

  My heart thundered with adrenaline. I should’ve done this sooner. This was the outlet I needed.

  I hauled my arm back for another blow, but firm hands closed around my biceps and pulled me back.

  “Josh.” Alex’s voice splashed a cold bucket of water on the flames consuming me. “That’s enough.”

  “Get off me,” I bit out. I strained against his hold, desperate for another fix. For more relief. “I’m not done.”